CHAMPIONING CREATIVITY SINCE 2007

Review of the Year: It's our favourite things of the year!

We know what you’ve all been waiting for – our top five Things! Right? Right?!! Things is the weekly feature where we take all of the most exciting stuff that we get sent throughout the year and share it with you, like a mouthpiece for the under-represented artists and designers masquerading as a rowdy show-off. Without further ado, then, here’s our favourites of the year.

Put a Egg On It: Issue #7

Put a Egg On It: Issue #7

Put a Egg On It: Issue #7

Put a Egg On It: Issue #7

Put a Egg On It: Issue #7

Put a Egg On It #7

In a land over-populated with fancy pants foodie mags and carefully photographed dishes, Put a Egg On It stormed in with its green cover, kicked up a storm with some top-notch content both editorial and visual, and then left again leaving us confused about what had just happened. That’s until the next issue, though. This is a food zine unlike any other.www.putaeggonit.com

Victory Journal: Summer 2013

Victory Journal: Summer 2013

Victory Journal: Summer 2013

Victory Journal: Summer 2013

Victory Journal: Summer 2013

Doubleday & Cartwright: Victory Journal: Summer 2013

We bloody love Victory Journal so we were very pleasantly surprised when one of the team popped into the studio to say hello and drop off a copy of their Summer issue earlier on this year. They never fail to impress with incredible photoshoots and off-the-beaten-track topics, and this feature on an abandoned swimming pool in the Catskills is one of the most interesting of the year. www.victoryjournal.com

Lasse Dearman: Split Second Feeling

Lasse Dearman: Split Second Feeling

Lasse Dearman: Split Second Feeling

Lasse Dearman: Split Second Feeling

Lasse Dearman: Split Second Feeling

Lasse Dearman: Split Second Feeling

We’re huge fans of Dutch photographer Lasse Dearman’s intriguing abstractions of youth, grime and everyday beauty, and his view of photography as tool for adventure is perfectly captured in his Split Second Feeling photo zine. Don’tcha reckon?www.lassedearman.tumblr.com

David Bhalla: Bookmarkers: #1

David Bhalla: Bookmarkers: #1

David Bhalla: Bookmarkers: #1

David Bhalla: Bookmarkers: #1

David Bhalla: Bookmarkers: #1

David Bhalla: Bookmarkers: #1

Set up by second year Kingston student David Bhalla, he went to his university’s library looking specifically for books that have been bookmarked and collated the most interesting finds into Bookmarkers, adding his thoughts alongside. David’s enthusiasm for learning new information and the reasons behind choosing each bookmark makes this a fascinating read. www.davidbhalla.co.uk

Further reading:

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Hot Chip are one of those bands that have always had a fantastic visual sensibility. Illustrator Wallzo has been at the helm of it, bringing us glorious Michael Craig Martin-esque block colours and shapes to decapitated statues. Now, the band is moving into the world of bespoke printing, with the artwork for new album Why Make Sense by Nick Relph using an algorithm that means each copy’s design will be unique.

Yener Torun is a 32 year-old architect who has turned Istanbul into the geographical equivalent of Aladdin’s cave of wonders. Tucked away among the beautiful Ottoman and Byzantine architecture and the blue Bosphorus are a wealth of impossibly bright buildings dominated by geometric patterns, rainbow hues and funny architectural idiosyncrasies. And through his Instagram account, Yener has been slowly but steadily documenting it all.

He may not grace the covers of magazines or the red carpet, but designer Simon Whybray is more famous than you think. When you’re lurking about on the internet and being entertained by seriously cool and interesting stuff – do you ever stop and think, who the hell made this? Well, occasionally, it’s Simon. Designer by day, Tumblr scroller by night, Simon spends most of his time tucked up in his bedroom overlooking Old Street on his laptop. Sound lazy? It isn’t. He’s busy creating products, GIFs, designs, logos, club nights, clothing, memes, typefaces, music…you name it. Being on the internet all day has fed Simon’s brain like a drip, and subsequently he’s now asked by big brands to come in and teach them what the hell is going on out there in the real – well, online – world.

It’s not often I get to write about my two great loves in a single article, but sometimes the stars align and I’m covering smoked fish and graphic design all in the space of 300 words. Today I feel blessed! This strange combination of subjects has come together thanks to Swedish agency Kurppa Hosk undertaking a wholesale rebrand for Falkenbergs Lax, a small, family-owned smoked salmon specialist. Charged with turning the small-scale brand into an international major player in the fish industry, Kurrppa Hosk renamed it Korshags, and have came up with a sleek new visual identity to accompany the new name.

While magazine redesigns often receive a great deal of attention, few are likely to be more scrutinised than the new-look New York Times Magazine which debuts on Sunday. The Times is the leading newspaper in the US and its magazine is read by nearly four million people every week. When listed, the changes design director Gail Bichler and her new art director Matt Willey have implemented sound exhaustive – redrawn fonts, a redrawn logo, a new approach to lay-outs, a new-look version of the online magazine. Add to this a raft of new features and editorial changes (such as a new weekly poem, a column that rotates between four critics and a dispatch from the frontline of internet culture) and you’d be forgiven for thinking that the new magazine will be unrecognisable.

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Exciting new student alert! Meet Pauline, currently working on her advanced degree in type design at École Estienne in Paris – how glamorous does that sound? It’s rare to find a student with as much consistently fantastic work on their site, and for a while I didn’t actually twig that Pauline was still studying. She’s designed typefaces, had a bash at letter pressing for her business cards, and made some publications that, if I’m honest, I’d actually buy. The way she represented a bunch of Stéphane Monnot short stories is well-designed without overshadowing the writing, and that publication about the concept of an ornament just looks fantastic. Remember this name: Pauline Le Pape, she’s got big things ahead of her.

How best to describe the enduring and ubiquitous influence of COS? The brand has become almost cult-like in its appeal since it was founded a mere eight years ago, creating designs which are somehow timeless and classic and simultaneously innovative.

“I’ve been thinking about this forever and want a woman’s touch”…"In shape, 29 y/o, six feet tall"…"I know it sounds crazy but it’s a fantasy of mine for a woman to"… These are the most SFW snippets we can publish from a rather nuts, very rude new project by Cartelle Interactive, the people that brought us the brilliant, trippy J Dilla Donuts tribute, Dilla Dimension.

In the two years since we first featured nomadic designer Gabriela Maskrey she’s taken on a lot of new projects and pushed her skills in all sorts of new directions. Originally she was all about editorial design – which it has to be said, she was great at – but she’s recently branched out into branding for Peruvian luxury food company La Pulperia. Her bold serif rendering of the company name coupled with historic imagery referencing Peru’s gastronomic culture combines to satisfying effect, and the addition of hand-drawn icons is a great touch too. All in all a great first foray away from the world of books and magazines.

When you hear the words “branded content” you probably don’t get that excited, right? Well, times are changing. No longer do brands want to settle for something that isn’t going to whet the imagination of an audience, and so they’re recruiting fantastic creatives and partnering with cool platforms to make it actually worth everyone’s time. With this in mind, check out this pretty breathtaking animation created by Google Play in collaboration with Creative Sunday.

When an insurance company challenges you to not skip through their latest ad on YouTube, your first reaction is likely to be “try me.” But you know what? They have actually pulled something pretty remarkable together for their latest advert. Well, I say remarkable, it’s pretty low-budget, but the idea behind it is great. Knowing that the majority of people wouldn’t watch an insurance ad on YouTube unless you were holding a gun to their head, they made their advert two seconds long. Then if like me you enjoy the first two seconds, you can stay for the whole thing. Best thing about this ad is how they didn’t even green screen the family, and you can see them wigging out and twitching as that dog goes all Beethoven on their dinner. Nice.

Discussing the “treacherous tide” of the “constantly surging ocean” of the web last year, we looked at the brilliant UK redesign of Wired, a project that wowed pretty much everyone. Now, the US Wired site has also upped its game in its first redesign since 2007, aiming to “create a clean and gratifying experience” through a clutter-free site. We had a chat with editor in chief Scott Dadich about designing a site for some very, very digital-savvy readers.

Toronto-based illustrator and cartoonist Jenn Liv is a whizz with colour. With sustained attention to detail, she illustrates often quite stereotypical moments but always with a twist. There’s a great battle between two knights on a cliff edge at sunset, just giving up; a romantic moment, flowers, a white dress, a gust of wind and the man just nonchalantly wandering off.

I think I might never have seen two illustrators as well paired as Faye Coral Johnson and Mike Redmond, the duo behind this charming new book Behind the Wild Heart. Faye’s work – sketchy, sweet and imperfect – seems to slot right in with Mike’s dynamic cartoony characters, and the two work together so often that it’s difficult to tell where one’s work ends and the other’s begins.

Often the most interesting branding work hinges on a simple twist, and such is the case in this work by Freytag Anderson for Fraher architects. The Scottish studio’s concept revolves around the neat idea of the “F” in the logo doubling up as an architectural floorpan.

“Las Vegas is the strip club capital of the world,” says Stefanie Moshammer, an Austrian photographer whose recent project led her to the underbelly of Nevada’s shimmering city. Stefanie began work on a series called Vegas and She, in which she documents strippers, nightclubs, and various bits and bobs that represent Las Vegas culture: bright pink limos, dust trails, palm trees, and diving boards into sapphire pools.

Editors' Picks

Hattie Stewart never stops giggling. It’s infectious, she’s a hoot. Her current solo show at London’s KK Outlet is under way, with a whole bunch of her now notorious, collectible doodles on magazine covers and, more recently, leather jackets. A Kingston graduate, Hattie now works for the likes of Rookie, House of Holland, Pepsi, and whoever else wants a big old dose of colour and weird magic injected into their brand. Her working style is instantly recognisable, and you’d be right in thinking that the nature of her work ties in to what she wears day-to-day.

Last week an interesting Twitter debate sprang up after a comment by graphic designer Andy Pressman who admitted that on a recent series he worked on it wasn’t always possible to read the books before designing the covers. So we decided to speak to a few other book cover designers and find out where they stand on this apparently quite divisive design issue; as ever you can add your thoughts using the comment thread below…

Life can be pretty boring when you’re a teenager. Rather than turning to the gory allure of video games and SnapChat, 18-year-old Izumi Miyazaki decided to take matters into her own hands and make a series of selfies that make yours look absolutely rubbish. By utilising household items and foodstuffs as props, and sometimes going as far as building her own sets (see head in the clouds photos below) Izumi transports herself into far off lands, so far off that they’re on a different world entirely. Her fixed, deadpan stare throughout makes the project not just endearing but also worth much more than if she was just larking about. It’s art, man. FYI she also sells badges and other small merch items – get ’em while you can.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve eaten sans serif, I’ve made huge typographic swear words with an ex, I’ve wandered Dalston taking pictures of kebab shop exteriors and I’ve seen Bodoni predict my fortune. Hell, I’ve even tried typographic dating. Why? Because of Sarah Hyndman, the one woman tour-de-force behind the Type Tasting enterprise, which takes a fun approach to typography and how it affects us emotionally.

Brooklyn-based graphic designer Elana Schlenker is not only the creator of “occasional pamphlet of typographic smut” Gratuituous Type, she’s also a freelancer with a magnificent array of colourful projects on her (frankly quite beautiful) website, a very good speaker, an exhibitor at exhibitions in Edinburgh and at London’s own KK Outlet. And she’s won a bunch of awards, too. Her aesthetic is pastel coloured without being sickly, innovative without feeling audacious and involves the kinds of books which just seem to make life nicer.

Here we are, the bloody top ten. Before you ask, yes, the Sushi Cats made it. Phew! It’s an unexpected top ten, but nevertheless an incredibly powerful one. These are the guys that you clicked on so much that they beat every single other post on It’s Nice That into the most read work of the year. Popular/best, tomato/tomato. You get the picture.

Here at It’s Nice That, 2013 saw us solidify our commitment to audio visual content with the launch of our brand new site First Broadcast. With bespoke video content, audio interviews, our weekly podcast Studio Audience, plus talks from our events, it’s a good place to lose yourself for a while engaging with some all-singing-all-dancing curated creativity (Disclaimer: No actual singing or dancing included). Here’s a look at some of the highlights…

Teenage years might be little more than a series of impassioned hobbies, angry Nirvana anthems and clumsy snogs to some, but the penultimate instalment of our top 100 means more than that to us. It’s packed full of art and design greatness! We’re like the advent calendar that you get to enjoy ten chocolate reindeer at a time! Without further ado, then, here are ten more metaphorical cardboard doors for you to rip off, you lucky sons of guns…

I had no idea I’d written quite so many posts over the last seven months, so trying to choose five of my favourite was something like placing a small child in the toy section at the Argos warehouse and telling them they would only have five things, and they couldn’t even have a look through the catalogue before choosing. Still, you asked for it, so here they are, in all of their flowery, miniature pastel-coloured glory.

This is where things get really bloody serious. The hallowed top 30 (is that even a thing?) is where the real cream of the cream (or creme de la creme to coin a new phrase that borrows from French) hang out. What delights are in store in this treasure trove of creative excellence? Who knows. Read on before I mix any more metaphors.

Trying to summarise the best of this year’s exhibitions is such a tall order that we’re really only prepared to do it once. We’ve already had a crack in this year’s Annual, so if you’d like to see what we really reckoned then you know where you can get your hands on one. Instead, here’s a bunch of brilliant shows that probably didn’t get the attention they deserved in Time Out and the papers and that. Enjoy them, they’re lovely.

Next year I turn 30, a milestone I am ignoring while all around seem hellbent on reminding me. So it is with some personal resonance that we come to the 30s, 10 posts ranging from naughty bags to not one but two Wes Anderson videos. So eyes down, and get ready to marvel at another selection of creative belters…

While Rob will use his wildcard post to turn the year into a witty personal creative narrative and Liv will undoubtedly dazzle you with her eclectic tastes, I just want to use this opportunity to bore you all to death with a bunch of comics that have made my year. Half of you probably think comics are a load of old toss, but I’ve got carte blanche to do what I want in this post, and what I want to do is force a hard-line agenda of graphic novels on the lot of you, like a Kim Jong-Un of comic art. Don’t forget to smile and clap in all the appropriate places…

Everyone loves the middle. Middle of a meal (main course), middle of a film (happy montage) and middle of a relationship (you’re not annoying each other yet). Welcome to the middle of our countdown of the best articles of 2013 and, like every other middle, it’s full of blissful joy and happiness. Read on, dear reader, read on….

Arguably the most exciting creative projects of 2013 can’t be pinned down to just one frame, so we’ve allowed them to overflow into a Review of the Year post all of their own, compiling some of the very best film, animation and moving image clips of the year. Where else would you find puppets pleasuring themselves, a crazy glimpse into the future by the Layzell Brothers (say no more) and a guide to tricky social situations narrated by Jason Schwartzman? As we thought! You need us.

I’ve heard great things from people claiming that your fifties are the best years of your life. I’m not quite there yet, but I fully intend to fill mine with copious holidays, throwing fabulous parties and flicking my silver hair over one shoulder while swigging champagne by the bottle. In celebration of that glorious vision, here are OUR fifties, from our yearly review of the top 100 posts of 2013, and my are they good. Read on…

It’s been a big year for independent publishing; either it was dying a terrible death or giving birth to incredible new titles, falling under the pressure of a global financial crisis or turning into another industry that’s somehow managed to survive. The only thing that was clear was that nobody understood what the hell was going on –especially so-called experts – and so we all had to just grit our teeth and hope that people would buy our magazines. To celebrate the sort-of-survival of ink on paper here’s some of our favourite titles to spring up anew or weather the storm of 2013.

In human ageing 61-70 are the years in which everyone you know who’s younger decides that you’ve peaked physically and mentally, meaning they speak slowly and loudly whenever they address you, ensure you’ve got a cushion at all times lest your brittle bones fracture from sitting on any hard surfaces and dismiss everything you say due to your imminent senility. So let’s hear it for these ageing has-beens. We still think they’re terrific, just remember to speak up and try to indulge their stories about the war.